Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I could not believe my eyes when the member for Blaxland's matter of public importance landed on my desk. Initially, I thought it was two of my amigo colleagues having a bit of a go at me. I thought this could not be serious—Labor talking about the NBN, Labor talking about fiscal responsibility—but it appears that in moving this motion the member for Blaxland is absolutely intent on reaching the pinnacle of 'Mount Hypocrisy'. Labor's record with this national program is an exemplar of how not to deliver a major infrastructure project. The reason why Australia, at the end of the 2013 election, was on a trajectory to $667 billion of debt was exactly because of this sort of wilful, disrespectful, wanton waste of taxpayer dollars.

Let us address some of the facts that the member for Blaxland so conveniently avoided. Labor's approach to the NBN was conceived on the back of an envelope in a 34 Squadron VIP aircraft. I understand it was the Baldric approach to policy development—pairs of underpants on the head and two pencils up the nose—and no cabinet process. It was rubber stamped by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the then communications minister Stephen Conroy. Think about that for a moment: no business case, no cabinet process for the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on the biggest, most complex infrastructure project in Australia's history. It is characterised by chaotic planning, flawed advice, inadequate governance and no benchmarking. You would think, if you are going to spend tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, you would look at other parts of the world for best practice where this has been rolled out, you would go and talk to companies like Alcatel-Lucent that, with noise reduction technology approved, you can shift data at 100 megabits per second across copper, and you would go and talk to the exemplars of the wireless world that can move data at incredible speeds. But, no, Senator Conroy and Prime Mister Rudd knew best. They always knew best because they always thought they were the smartest men in the room.

What history shows us is that, despite extravagant promises that were never realised over three elections, this was probably the most poorly managed project in the Australian Commonwealth's history. My home state of Tasmania is a compelling case study of Labor's NBN catastrophe being turned around by this government. The early NBN rollout in Tassie had ground to a halt. The lead construction partner, Visionstream, had downed tools. Hundreds of contractors had no work. They were contacting me. Having made a significant investment in this project, their future was enormously uncertain. Only 32,000 households had fibre running down their streets, yet one-quarter did not even have a direct link into the network, so they could not order a service. The then communications minister, now Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, saw this firsthand when he came to Launceston on 4 April. He met with some of those contractors, he helped me run a public communications forum in Launceston and he saw the gulf between the Labor maps and the reality on the ground.

In government, Labor's embarrassment is obvious. We saw that in the first two Labor speakers, who talked about everything but their record when it comes to the NBN. It is a clear indicator of them wanting to put distance between them and their own record on this project. During the past two years, much has been done by Minister Turnbull, now the Prime Minister, to remedy Labor's NBN disaster. I was pleased to publicise a week ago that the NBN has topped 100,000 premises in Tasmania—more than tripling in two years—73,000 premises now have an active fixed line footprint and 27,000 homes and businesses in smaller towns have access to superfast wireless. By any measure, this is a dramatic turnaround that has seen 13,000 premises added to the network footprint in Tasmania alone. Construction in Launceston is scheduled to finish by August 2016, which will make Launceston one of the first cities in Australia to be fully networked, and NBN anticipates being able to offer a service to every home or business in Tasmania within two years. So I say to those opposite: reflect on your own record, stop trying to reinvent history, congratulate Minister Turnbull, congratulate his department, congratulate Bill Morrow and NBN Co on getting this project back on track.

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